Highlights

It had been three weeks since Vaughn had lost his job at a small, failing biotech firm, where he'd been the information technology director.

Lying in a hospital bed in Germany, jaw wired shut, she'd listened to one of her superiors explain the reality of her situation: "Unfortunately, it's the price of doing business in this part of the world," he told her, as though she'd been assaulted by a couple of Taliban fighters and not a pair of sergeants in the United States Army.

But George Abe went way back with Hendricks, and he'd assured her that her partner's negativity had nothing to do with being black in the LAPD.